


love is a martyr

by inber



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Almost smut, Angst, Confessions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, I think I had a mood swing halfway through this, Insecure Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Jaskier | Dandelion Loves Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, M/M, Medical Procedures, Mutual Pining, Playing Chicken with Dicks, Protective Jaskier | Dandelion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:28:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24740794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inber/pseuds/inber
Summary: “Shouldn’t have—like that, Jaskier. I’m... I don’t know...” Geralt grinds the heel of his palm into his eyes. “Don’t know what I want.”Jaskier is kind enough not to point out the fact that Geralt accused him of being misguided mere minutes ago. Geralt is grateful. The bard does chuckle, though.“Yes, you do.” Jaskier says.Or: Jaskier tends to Geralt after a hunt. Heat flares, burns out, and they address the embers.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 59
Kudos: 436





	love is a martyr

This was fucking humiliating.

Geralt of Rivia, survivor of the most extreme mutant trials; witcher-warrior of lore; alleged friend and saviour of humanity – currently with his pants down, as one of the aforementioned humans kneels before him. A tirade of indignant squawking becomes the soundtrack to his predicament. He leans back against the tree behind him and tries to drown it out.

It’s difficult to ignore Jaskier. That’s why he has his trousers shucked in the first place. Geralt is distantly pleased that he chose fairly clean smallclothes that morning, and in the same thought he wonders why he should give a fuck. If Jaskier takes offence to his undergarments, Jaskier should not be in such close proximity to them, endlessly prattling away about cleanliness and infections and damn it, does the bard breathe through his fucking _ears?_

“As if this doesn’t need stitches!” Jaskier says, now that he’s washed the worst of the blood and dirt left behind from the ekhidna’s claw-gouge in his thigh.

“It doesn’t.” Geralt is nothing if not consistent.

“If you want to walk around with a four inch welt of a scar, sure.” Jaskier frowns, as he presses gauze against the oozing wound. “Hold that.”

“Do you think a four inch welt might ruin my chances of marrying advantageously?” Geralt asks, deadpan. He does as Jaskier has instructed anyway. The bard snorts as he soaks a length of thread with white spirit.

“You make fun, but you know that the bigger scars get itchy. And for your _information_ , dearest witcher, I believe that you’d be rather a sensation at any court you chose to step into.” Jaskier’s tongue pokes out of his mouth as he works the twine through the eye of the needle. Something low and warm kindles within Geralt at the sight.

“Oh, I know it.” The witcher grumbles, “How they’d clamber over one another to get a peek at the freak. How the brave ones would ask inane questions about fae or— _ow_.”

“Don’t ow at me,” Jaskier chides, beginning to suture the rent flesh with skill, “You just took a talon to the leg. A needle is nothing.”

“Do I get to stab you with it after, then?”

“No. I was smart enough not to get myself hurt, thank you.” Jaskier doesn’t mean to provoke, but the words have Geralt’s hackles up. He’d made an avoidable mistake. Too slow.

“Get on with it, bard.” Geralt snaps. He folds his arms across his chest like a petulant youth loitering in a dusk forest. Sans pants.

“Ah, and the ‘b’ word comes out. You do have a penchant for forgetting my name when you’re stroppy.” Jaskier says.

“There are plenty of other ‘b’ words I could call you.” Geralt notes.

“You ignore that whilst I thoroughly enjoy roughing it with you in the wilds, darling witcher, I am in fact a legitimate viscount, and therefore not a _bastard_ – although I do sometimes wonder if my parents had planned for me to—”

“I was thinking of ‘bitch’, actually.” Geralt says.

Jaskier makes a noise not dissimilar to a hen being dropped from a window. “I _beg_ your pardon? Gods, I work my clever fingers to the bone, patching you up, and this is the thanks I get? You can be such a bear.”

“That’s a ‘b’ word.” Geralt grunts as Jaskier wraps a bandage around the clean, stitched wound.

“Do you like it?” Jaskier asks, “I could call you ‘Bearalt’, if you insist on being so grizzly.”

A curl of upper lip, the display of ivory fanged frustration. “Shut the fuck up, _bard_.”

“Make me, _witcher_.”

Geralt’s shoulders tighten. A growl like torn parchment shivers at his chest. “Fine, suck my fucking dick. You’re already on your knees.”

And Jaskier freezes. Geralt expects to scent anger or frustration on him, but a tongue of lust licks up to tease his nostrils instead. When he’s aroused, Jaskier smells warm and spicy and it’s not as though Geralt hasn’t smelled it before – they do travel together – but this is the first time Jaskier has reacted this way to... well. To the witcher.

Isn’t it?

Helplessly, Geralt’s cock responds. He twitches in his smallclothes, filling. Jaskier looks up at him, the summertime sky-blue of his eyes veiled beneath thick lashes.

“You think I won’t?” He shoots back. He reminds Geralt of a bristling wolf pup, too stupidly territorial to back down in the face of danger. Geralt is fucking dangerous. Why doesn’t Jaskier know that?

This has turned into some sort of game, Geralt is sure. He’s aware of Jaskier’s preference for men. Surely his reaction is simply to the phrasing, and not to Geralt himself. So the witcher cocks one hip, gloved thumb tucking into the waistband of his undergarments, exposing more of the sharp jut of his cut pelvis. The peek of his silvery pubes are just about visible, and Geralt thinks he hears Jaskier’s heart stutter and quicken. But he can’t be sure. His own pulse is so loud.

“Go on, then.” Geralt is jeering. His eyes are like crushed saffron stalks cradled within an onyx mortar. Jaskier will blush and call him an old pervert and turn back to the fire—

Except Jaskier only does one of those things. He blushes, juts his chin up defiantly, and reaches for the cord that ties Geralt’s smallclothes in place. Geralt almost jerks his arms to stop him, stunned. He’s holding his breath captive without reason.

“Don’t come crying to me when a whore’s mouth won’t satisfy you after this.” Jaskier’s words are hot promises and _damn it all_ if Geralt isn’t achingly hard as the bard’s breath seeps through the fabric.

They’re still playing, aren’t they? The knot is undone; all Geralt need do is withdraw his thumb from the waist, and the cloth will fall away at Jaskier’s will. He _wants_ Geralt to back out, to fold and concede defeat, and then he’ll never hear the fucking end of how he _ran away_ from Jaskier’s delight of a talented mouth – pillow lips and pink tongue – and _that’s_ why Geralt’s really doing this, he tells himself. For the clout.

Not because he’s thought about that mouth before. Not because he’s heard Jaskier getting fucked in the room next door to him in an inn – all ‘oh’ and ‘fuck yes’ and the sweet whine he makes when he comes – whilst trying to get some damn sleep. Not because... 

Jaskier is looking at him like he’s worthy of receiving pleasure. For free, with no obligations and no disclaimers and _fuck_ , Geralt looks gorgeous in the gloss of the bard’s gaze. Like someone to be wanted.

Geralt yearns to lean forward and tumble into the promise of those high-noon lake-eyes. He wants to drown himself in everything Jaskier and believe the things written on the bard’s features as intrinsic truth. How could Jaskier know, though? How could a human know the things that he does: the metal zing of raw yielding flesh still hot from the kill; the expression on a condemned werewolf’s face as he turns man; the roar of a festering world that is still too small to earn a witcher’s shock.

How odd to find a mirror for all his monstrosities in the naive offering of a kindly bard.

He pushes away from the tree so fast that he almost knocks Jaskier over. Geralt is yanking his trousers back up over the rage of his erection, putting distance between himself and the other man before Jaskier can even register that he’s won their little game of chicken. Shame burns a path through Geralt’s veins. He’d been so close to pretending, so close to taking something Jaskier could not have known he was offering.

Geralt would have let the wound heal unstitched and worn the weal of a scar because that’s what animals and monsters did.

“Geralt, I—” Jaskier’s voice is tight, and Geralt can smell the salt of his unshed tears. Fuck.

“Leave it.” Geralt barks, rummaging around in his pack. He doesn’t need anything in it. It’s just easier to busy himself with nothing than to turn around and face the something of Jaskier.

Jaskier’s teeth click together as his mouth shuts. He sits in front of the dwindling fire, stoking the flames with a poking stick, adding more wood. Geralt thinks about making an excuse and vanishing into the shadows to ruminate for the evening. It’s a good plan.

“I wanted to.” Jaskier’s voice is like a silver slice knifing though Geralt’s skittish self-loathing. It makes him stop ferreting. “Not ‘cause you told me to, or out of pride. I wanted to make you feel good.”

Geralt’s breath bleeds ragged from his lips. The _why_ of it all circles him, vulture-thoughts ready to pick apart the carrion of his mistrust. Jealously, he guards it.

“You don’t know what you want.” Geralt says, letting the tenor of his voice rattle like a warning. Go on, then. Let Jaskier hear the snarl and snap of the beast.

But how many times has he tried that? How often has he foamed rabid at Jaskier’s advances like the man wields an axe and not a mended and laundered shirt? Or a softly scented lather of soap to rub through Geralt’s hair? He barks and brays but Jaskier doesn’t see the teeth and claw of him.

Geralt remembers Jaskier’s eyes, before. How soft. How perfect a place to call home.

There’s a smile in Jaskier’s tone. “Silly witcher. I’ve followed you for a dozen years. I would have thought that by now it’s rather _obvious_ what I want.”

No. Geralt swallows, flexes his fingers in the restrictive leather of his gloves. “You want a muse, Jaskier. Coin for your purse, tales for your grandchildren when you are old. That’s all I can give you.” Unsaid, that’s all I _should_ give you.

“Geralt.” Jaskier sounds firm. “Come here.”

He wants to flinch away, refuse, but that’s the problem of it all, isn’t it? Geralt thinks he has a tendency to indulge Jaskier, but what he truly desires is his _own_ comfort. And he knows that makes him fucking selfish. But it doesn’t stop him from obeying. The witcher turns, and skulks over to the fire, sitting opposite the bard.

That’s too far away for Jaskier, apparently. The other man rises and moves to relocate beside Geralt. He feigns indifference, prodding at the coals that spit sparks and ash, thinking Jaskier might get the hint. Geralt has nothing to give him.

He almost jumps out of his skin when he feels Jaskier’s hands in his hair. Trembling coltishly, Geralt allows him to undo the leather that binds the pale strands away from his face. Then Jaskier takes a wide-toothed bone comb – one he purchased specifically to deal with the chaos of Geralt’s locks – and begins to brush. It’s a routine that is equally familiar and suddenly jarringly foreign. Geralt sits so still that his pulse plummets to a sluggish thrum. 

The tune that Jaskier hums is one that Geralt only faintly recognises. He tries to remember where he’s heard it before, but the vault of his mind only provides him with a faded memory of meadow-grass and cricket chirps. Combined, the two elements soothe him enough to allow Jaskier the opportunity to groom him sleek without fuss. By the time his hair is snare-free and loose, Geralt’s head is resting on the bard’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry.” Geralt whispers.

Jaskier tucks a lock of starlight silver behind Geralt’s ear. “I know you are, darling.”

Words roll across Geralt’s tongue and are barred by guardian teeth, swallowed back to simmer inside him. Someday they will roil in a boil and spill. Geralt hopes it’ll be soon.

“Shouldn’t have—like _that_ , Jaskier. I’m... I don’t know...” Geralt grinds the heel of his palm into his eyes. “Don’t know what I want.”

Jaskier is kind enough not to point out the fact that Geralt accused him of being misguided mere minutes ago. Geralt is grateful. The bard does chuckle, though.

“Yes, you do.” Jaskier says.

Geralt’s sigh drains from him, the final dreg of ale drunk at last call. “Yes, I do.”

His bard leans, places his head atop Geralt’s fondly. They sit like that for a time. There’s more warmth in Jaskier than Geralt could ever find in a campfire.

“Ask me again.” Jaskier says, “Another time, when you’re ready. I’ll be here, Geralt. And I’ll still want you.”

Geralt’s eyes flick closed, the orange brand of flame a memory on his sclera. He simmers. The vultures swoop lower, and this time he lets them.

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as one thing and then became another thing and now it's this thing. I dunno.
> 
> If you want other things, I'm on tumblr as @inber. Thanks for reading!


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